What is another word for contrives?

Pronunciation: [kəntɹˈa͡ɪvz] (IPA)

Contrives is a verb that means to plan with cleverness or skillful manipulation. There are several synonyms for this word, including devise, concoct, craft, engineer, hatch, invent, orchestrate, organize, scheme, and plan. All of these words carry the connotation of a deliberate and inventive effort, suggesting a certain amount of ingenuity and creativity. Some synonyms carry additional shades of meaning, such as scheme, which can suggest a certain degree of deception or negative intent, or orchestrate, which implies a certain degree of coordination or careful planning. Regardless of which synonym you choose, all convey the idea of working hard to create something out of nothing.

Usage examples for Contrives

Having tattooed their offspring, each mother contrives to find her own, and takes charge of it by a private arrangement with the nurse to whom it has been officially assigned.
"Due North or Glimpses of Scandinavia and Russia"
Maturin M. Ballou
The woman, now very pale, contrives to point to the fatal entry in the album which she still grasps; and asks her friend-after quoting the writer's words-how, but in her own way, the mouth of such a one could have been stopped.
"A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)"
Mrs. Sutherland Orr
He contrives by a supreme effort to gallop out to the Emperor-who has watched the storming of the city from a mound a mile or two away-fling himself from the horse, and, holding himself erect by its mane, announce the victory.
"A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.)"
Mrs. Sutherland Orr

Famous quotes with Contrives

  • Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and contrives presumptuous deeds.
    Hesiod
  • To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him.
    Potter Stewart
  • It is not inappropriate to describe the function of the teacher as that of acting to compel awareness. This is not to say that such compulsion contrives to bring a subject to act in the way in which the teacher believes the free man ought to act. It aspires only to assure that the subject is acting for himself and not as the mere instrument of unmediated impulses. There is even a compulsory quality about the Socratic method for, by asking questions, by enquiring in the reasons and grounds for doing this or that, it forces a man to conceive of himself in terms of intentions; it thereby forces him to be free. It does not force him, however, to act in a manner substantively different from this original impulses. … The man who swings at his enemy in blind rage may, after lengthy consideration of creative alternatives, swing at him with cool deliberation. The intentionalist cannot accept the tradition of Kant, Green, and Bosanquet which polarizes conscious duty and preconscious desire and presupposes that reflective awareness will always produce substantive changes in the character of our goals, for to him it is the qualitative change that turns mere impulses into goals that is significant for freedom.
    Benjamin Barber
  • It's shocking, the positions, the unchecked simplicity with which one mind contrives to fertilize another! Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.
    Wisława Szymborska

Related words: contrive, contrived, contriving

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  • What does contriving mean?
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